“I’ll Pay You Back When I Grow Up,” Girl Told Mountain Man — 15 Years Later, He Remembered
Chapter 10
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"I can chop my own damn wood, Clara," Gideon growled on the morning of the 12th day. He was sitting on the edge of the cot, his left hand gripping the wooden bed frame, his chest bare beneath the heavy linen wrappings.Clara didn't even look up from the cast-iron skillet where she was frying strips of salt pork. "If you swing an axe, you will tear the sutures in your trapezius. You will hemorrhage, and I will leave you to bleed to death on the floor, because I refuse to waste my thread fixing your stupidity twice."Gideon scowled, glaring at her back. "You talk too much.""You complain too much," she shot back, sliding the hot pork onto a tin plate and setting it on the table. "Eat. You need the fat and the salt."He grumbled, but he stood up. He walked slowly to the table, favoring his right side, his balance slightly off. He sat heavily in the chair and picked up a fork with his left hand.He ate in silence for a few minutes, watching her clean the medical instruments by the fire. The silence between them was no longer filled with the frantic tension of impending death; it had settled into something resembling an armed truce.He observed her carefully. She moved with a sharp, no-nonsense efficiency. She didn't flinch at the sight of blood, she didn't jump when the wind howled down the chimney, and she didn't bat an eye at the rugged, unwashed reality of his existence. The little girl in the oversized coat who had stared blankly at a frozen world was buried deep inside this formidable woman."Why did you come back?" Gideon asked suddenly.Clara paused, a rag in one hand, a pair of forceps in the other. "I told you. I owed you a debt.""People forget debts, Clara. Especially debts owed to dead men. You built a life in the city. You became a doctor. You didn't have to drag yourself out to this godforsaken rock just to patch up an old fool who got careless."Clara put the forceps down. She turned to face him, the firelight catching the sharp, proud angles of her face."You didn't just save my life, Gideon. You bought it. You traded six months of your blood and sweat so a terrified orphan wouldn't freeze to death in a muddy street. You gave me a future. Every patient I have saved in St. Louis, every fever I have broken, every bone I have set—they owe their lives to you. I didn't come back out of obligation. I came back out of respect."Gideon stared at his plate. The words struck him harder than the bullet had. He wasn't used to respect; he was used to fear, indifference, and hostility. He didn't know how to carry the weight of what she was saying, so he deflected."Well," he muttered, stabbing a piece of pork, "you're a terrible cook. Salt pork's burned."